It’s a famine of beauty, and that’s just what we need.
Couture week started with Schiaparelli, and to say it was a disappointment would be an understatement. Daniel Roseberry has been producing underwhelming and out-of-touch collections for a while now, but this one was just sad. This is the so-called height of couture: the epitome of craftsmanship. But is that really what we want from Haute Couture now? Are beautiful gowns with hours of craftsmanship and some Schiaparelliysh surrealism enough? They would’ve been in 1962, but not in 2025.
Scrap most of Couture Week out of the picture and you’d miss nothing. Iris van Herpen is ethereal, Armani is timeless chic, and Robert Wun is “fascinating.” They’re all beautiful and amazing and all—but are they captivating? None of these traditionally beautiful collections with traditional couture features are captivating. You’re only truly captivated by the ones that reject beauty. Enter the two horsemen of contemporary couture: the last Balenciaga by Demna and the first Artisanal Margiela by Glenn.
Glenn fans might rise and curse me for even comparing his collection to Demna’s, but honestly, that’s the best compliment it could get. You need to go past the Martin references, the masks, the venue—to actually find the core of Glenn’s design ideology and why he’s a good fit for the Maison. We can’t deny that the first looks in the collection stressed us out with how predictable they were. But it was after watching the whole show, and feeling the uneasiness—the terror at times—that we remembered what we really need: ugliness.
Ugliness is the beauty of our society today. If you can produce something utterly ugly, disturbing, horrifying—that’s when you’ve won the game. Beauty bores. Beauty is more accessible than ever. Everything and everyone is beautiful now. But to have just enough ugliness? That’s what sets you apart. Glenn’s creatures are brutal. They aren’t caricatures of Martin Margiela’s identity the way Galliano’s were. Galliano, among all the ugly, still looked for the pretty—Glenn Martens does the opposite. He horrified us with the super-cinched waists, the wires cutting into models’ bodies. He reminded us that beneath all the glory of fashion lies a kind of ugliness so deep you can’t imagine fashion without it. Why offer escapism when we can offer monsters? Very fitting of human nature, if you ask me.
What Glenn does, Demna does better. He’s the master of ugly. The monster. The creep. He’s crippled the name of Balenciaga so much that it no longer represents glamour—it represents monstrosity and scandalous ugliness. Even the most beautiful gowns in his couture collection are stained with the name Balenciaga—the satanic brand that produces garbage bags. It doesn’t matter how many perfectly cut gowns and suits Demna puts out, the looks that stay in the minds of the audience are the untamed ones shoved in the middle.
Isn’t that what Demna wants? To play with the mind of the viewer? To show his mastery of couture—the gold bobbin—only to smear it with out-of-place looks from his distorted reality. The moment you think he’s going to give you a standard perfect collection, he scratches that thought out with reality. And that reality is ugly. There’s nothing beautiful or perfect about the world around Demna. Everything is full of horror.
Being personal for years in your career is not an easy thing to do, but it’s essential if you want to be a Demna, or a Glenn. It’s the raw emotion creeping out of your collections that marks you as the future of couture.
